I went the easy route and used a store bought mix and icing and decorated it. Actually we made cupcakes so it wouldn't be a huge cake for her, but still her own one to play in.

If you want to make something kind of healthy (if you can say that about cake, lol) maybe a carrot cake w/ cream cheese frosting, that way you can still decorate the top because the icing is pretty white.

for dd#1's first birthday I made a ladybug cake (from a mix) and baked it in a pyrex bowl and used a custard cup for the head. I tinted frosting red with wiltons coloring and used black tube frosting to draw wings,oreo's for spots. For her little cake I used a muffin tin and a mini muffin tin to bake the cake in and decorated it with the red frosting as well and you could use mini oreo's or black circles. They turned out really cute.

Posting again. I just found this cute and simple 1st birthday cake: I know it isn't a recipe but darn if i didn't want a snoopy cake for dd so much this would have been the next best thing.http://www.icingandthecake.co.uk/ima...birth-cake.jpg
Nice and simple looking.

For my daughters first I made a cake in the shape of a letter 1, decorated and iced it just for her to "dig into". Then for everyone else, I made a cake (all iwth cake mixes), frosted it white, then took marshmallows of different sizes and toothpicks along with colored sugar and made little animals out of them. Mostly giraffs and teddy bears. I would dip hte edges of the marshmallows in the colored sugar to give it some flare.

If you want a professional icing recipe, I got this from a woman in the checkout at Farmer Jack! LOL! It's perfect!